Tenants from Hell. Every Landlord’s Nightmare

It’s the situation every landlord dreads. You do the usual checks, the tenants seem like nice reasonable people but 6 or 12 months later they have trashed your property……..and if you haven’t got a professional inventory and supporting evidence such as photos (or even better) a video you have no hope of keeping the deposit. In fact, even if it is obvious to all that the tenant is responsible for the damage, literally all they have to say is “it was like that when I moved in”. The adjudication bodies regard the deposit as the tenant’s money and so if you cannot prove otherwise you will not be awarded any damages.

Below are some examples of checkout experiences witnessed by clients of The Video Inventory Agency:

“I had two young ladies who turned out to be lap dancers. On checkout I discovered they had installed a pole in the living room damaging both the floor and ceiling. They had broken the legs of several chairs (I can only imagine how that occurred), there was red hair dye over the carpet in almost every room and over several of the wall heaters, the hob was cracked, the oven encrusted with carbon and one of their boyfriends had kicked holes in a bathroom door.  All in all about £4,000 worth of damages.  Lucky I had instructed an inventory to be done at the start of the tenancy – or so I thought. As it happened, the inventory which contained about 20 photographs did not cover any of the damaged areas and I was advised that it would be pointless to try and recover damages.  Great! I was appalled that they could get away with damaging the property and get away with it.”

A tenant in Cardiff who very sadly left two cats and a dog trapped inside the house after trashing it. There was animal mess throughout the entire house, the dog had died of starvation and the two cats were placed into care with the RSPCA who are now prosecuting the tenant. Thankfully, video evidence necessary to claim damages was obtained. Below is an extract of the video evidence recorded (some viewers may find the images disturbing, no dead animals are shown).

Read some more stories about Tenants from Hell in part 2 of this story next week and learn how you can best protect yourself.

This Guest Blog was kindly submitted by Frazer Fearnhead of